Family, friends mourn loss of Chestnuthill teen

Many family members, friends and schoolmates of Emma-Grace Stewart-King, 16, attended her funeral Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Roseto on Saturday.

CHAD SMITH

Many family members, friends and schoolmates of Emma-Grace Stewart-King, 16, attended her funeral Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Roseto on Saturday.

Emma, a Chestnuthill Township resident and a junior at Pius X High School, committed suicide earlier in the week.

On Saturday, mourners came to the church to grieve the loss of Emma — a girl who was active in her school and was said to have a good sense of humor — and also to share sentiments of shock.

"Emma was a vibrant young lady on the outside, but within, one can only imagine the struggles. And now we are all left to ponder the suddenness of it," Stephen Maco, chaplain of Pius X High School, which sits directly across the street from the church, said to the many mourners.

Emma, who was a member of the high school band, the high school Spanish club and forensics club, who tutored and was also involved in the Future Business Leaders of America, committed suicide on Dec. 4, sending shockwaves through Pius X, a small Catholic high school, and the local community.

Though Emma's funeral Mass was without a doubt a somber event — the chin of her father, Jeffrey, trembled as he looked at Emma's shrouded coffin and many, many people openly cried — there was one detail that added a tiny bit of lightness to the service and spoke much about Emma's personality.

Every person who walked into the church was handed a fake, gag mustache, the type with glue on the back. People were allowed to wear these fake mustaches during the service. In fact, several people, the majority of them young women, wore the mustaches, even as the priest handed Communion wafers to them.

When asked after the service what the significance of the mustaches was, one of Emma's friends said that Emma had often joked that "everything was better with a mustache."

Though Pius X High School sent out a letter to parents on Dec. 5 explaining how the school is handling the tragedy and offering guidance to parents on how they can support a teenager that is grieving, little has been said, at least in the public domain, about why Emma may have taken her own life.

On an online memorial message board for Emma on Saturday, one of Emma's classmates wrote that Emma "always made the conversations in our AP (advanced placement) class much more interesting." On another memorial message board, a picture shows Emma standing inside a narrow school locker, smiling and giving two thumbs up. And on Emma's Facebook page, which is set to private, though some pictures are viewable, she has listed that her nickname is "grape drank," a humorous reference to a sugary drink popular in urban areas.

Her Facebook profile picture is of herself, a young woman with long brown hair and a strong chin. The picture shows her standing among several large sunflowers.